sorry, deleted since irrelevant

I don't think rapture is nerfed badly. I suspect that the once every 12 seconds rule applies to the energising effect and not to the mana return from PWS being absorbed or dispelled. Disc priests simply need to use PWS more. You can expect to get about 1% of your max mana returned every second from rapture now in a tough fight where you have very little OH, but realistically its 1% every 2 seconds in most senarios. If you use two PWS per 15 seconds that is 5% per 15 second or 1% every 3 seconds, just from your basic usage of PWS. In cases where you have a lot of raid wide damage, free spammable PWS, not only means its easy to maintain the 25% haste buff, it also means massive mana returns, especially since when you use it on yourself you can expect to get 4.5% mana back.

The new rapture is going to be less powerful than the old one, but not much. What is lost from rapture is gained by having PWS off the 4 second CD and costing effectively no mana. Think of saphiron any PWS you cast is certain to be used up and you have no 4 second CD. You could actually produce massive HPS by just rolling PWS and using PoM/penance on CD. You can do this forever and I am talking literally here. You would actually gain mana while doing so.

The main issue now with the new changes, is that if disc priests stay exclusively on the tank they will have a lot less mana regen, but lets face it if you are on the tank only you won't run oom anyway. Might have to use a Pot and shadowfiend though. In most cases you will be able to fire PWS on other targets to keep up your borrowed time haste and you can do so for free.

The new changes are not really a significant nerf to disc. If anything they are a decent buff.

I think you are misreading the talent, you will not regain mana when pw:s absorbs damage but only when pw:s fades from having absorbed its maximum amount.

Short note on the Energize (2% Mana) portion of Rapture: A disc priest would be worth ~146 mp5 (22k mana pool) to multiple other casters/healers if they are shielded on WS-cooldown. This is more than half of what replenish does.

Self-shielding on CD contributes ~166 mp5 (25k mana pool), in addition to the already-discussed 2.5% on full aborb.

Of course, this requires the shields to be used up within the 15 seconds of WS (read: aoe damage).

I'm a bit disoriented by the patch notes.

I agree that rapture needs to be tuned down. I couldn't understand previously that they didn't nerf the disc regen.
However, that's a big big strike on it.

But what concerns me most is what they want from disc priest :
The grace change is an absurdity. We get punished if healing someone else than the tank :s

The rapture change is unclear.
If mana return is not on cd, combined with the PW:S change, we are best know at throwing shields in aoe fights : disc will be in charge of raid healing for Sapphiron, Horreb or Malygos. Just shield every one, and throw a POM or POH when you get bored. You don't loose any mana, have a very good hps, instant cast, and protect people from deaths.

If the mana return effect is on cd. the talent seems fairly weak. When comparing to the paladin regen nerf, I can't understand it.

The patch notes in question are subject to change, and even if the change does stay, I really don't think it will hurt us all that badly over-all. It just means instead of ending patchwerk 25 man with 80% mana we might only end it with 25% :p

Discipline's mana regeneration was too effective, but the rapture change is a significant nerf and a significant change to spell prioritization. This change is silly. I expect them to do a partial reversion in later patch iterations.

With a significant change to mana regen, increasing discipline throughput becomes all that more important. This is somewhat provided for in raid healing (spammable PW:S and targetable Prayer of Healing), but single-target healing receives no significant buff.

I don't see discipline being viable in Ulduar at this point. Holy has better throughput and similar levels of mana regen (although this latter part is speculative until we have better data available).

I am torn by the tendency that they seems to want us to shield more people
(hence no CD on PWS, and PW:Barrier that is yet to come)
but want us to heal just 1 target.
(Grace can only be on one target, and stacking DA)

But the fact that this is subject to change.
Just hoping the Rapture tool tips will get clarify.

Would be superb if they keep the old mechanic (of Rapture) and give us the ability to energize PWS target too.. but may be I'm hoping too much.

I don't think this is that unusual. Many fights are alternating phases of the boss pounding on the MT (single target healing), followed by lots of AoE dmg. Examples that jump to mind are Anub'arak, Noth, and to a lesser degree, Loken.

I disagree on skipping 2 points of Mental Agility. If we are going to spam PW:S more, the mental agility points are better suited then in Renewed Hope. I would further argue that Desparate Prayer is even more situational then renewed hope and would lean toward a more 58/13 build

However I think people will agree that focused will is now more useful then renewed hope. In addition I have always wanted to go down the reflective shield side of things to provide that little bit more damage to the boss. I wonder with scaling of spell power it actually might be slightly useful as a variation spec, as long as you are killing bosses.

Until the combat log is changed, there is no way to put a true value on the disc spec. How much mitigation are you doing "this fight", cannot be answered clearly. I like the 6% increase in haste. My BiS gear choices will need to be reevaluated.

Headhuntress, thank you, I had forgotten that we already had 5%.

In addition I am trying to see how glyph of Penance works with our Aspiration talent. Are we looking at a 6s or a 6.4s cooldown of Penance?